Catharine Macaulay's Letters on Education: Odd but Equal

Catharine Macaulay’s Letters on Education: Odd but Equal

CATHERINE GARDNER

Commentators on the work of Catharine Macaulay acknowledge her influence on the pioneering feminist writing of Mary Wollstonecraft. Yet despite Macaulay’s interest in equal education for women, these commentators have not considered that Macaulay offered a self-contained, sustained argument for the equality of women. This paper endeavors to show that Macaulay did produce such an argument, and that she holds a place in the development of early feminism independent of her connections with Wollstonecraft.

Catharine Macaulay’s work Letters on Education published just five years before A Vindication of the Rights of Womn, is an acknowledged influence on Mary Wollstonecraft; indeed Wollstonecraft herself states that when she first thought of writing the Vindication, she “anticipated Mrs. Macaulay’s approbation” (Wollstonecraft 1982,207).’ It seems to be generally accepted by commentators on Wollstonecraft that Macaulay’s ideas on equal education and her critique of Rousseau’s theory of sex-complementarity are developed by Wollstonecraft into her clarion call for equality.’ While it was Macaulay who argued that “there is but one rule of right for the conduct of all human beings,” it was Wollstonecraft who turned it into an early feminist slogan (Macaulay 1974, 201). Yet despite Macaulay’s formative influence on the writer of the Vindication, the Letters were largely ignored when they were published and remain neglected today. The lack of interest by Macaulay’s contemporaries may have occurred because, as Florence Boos suggests, the Letters were “swiftly buried in the reaction which succeeded the radicalism of the early 1790s; few early nineteenth century [sic] readers were interested in Enlightenment pre- scriptions for educational reform” (Boos 1976,65). Given the current interest in “rediscovering” women philosophers, Macaulay’s neglect in the present is not so easily explained. It may result partly from misconceptions about the

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content of Macaulay’s work; a work that is nothing more than an influence on Wollstonecraft or a prescription for educational reform may not seem worth “rediscovering.”

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An examination of modern critical work on Macaulay would seem to show that these misconceptions rest mainly on an understanding of the Letters on Education as a collection of comments on a diverse series of topics. In “Catha- rine Macaulay’s Letters on Education (1790): An Early Feminist Polemic” (1976) and in “Catharine Macaulay: Historian and Political Reformer,” co- authored with William Boos (1980), Florence Boos introduces modem readers to Macaulay’s work. In the first essay, Boos places the Letters in the framework of the Enlightenment debate on education. Yet while Macaulay is heir to Locke, Rousseau, FCnelon, and HelvCtius, her educational reform is distinctive in that she outlined a system of education for both sexes. Boos offers a careful documentation of the influence of the Letters on Wollstonecraft’s Vindication, but also takes pains to emphasize the differences between the two writers’ views. For Boos, Macaulay is the more restrained of the two in her criticism of the situation of women, as well as less radical in her view of the conditions necessary for social reform. Macaulay “glances backward” at de Genlis and Fenelon in letter 25 on the importance of a proper education for an ideal prince; whereas Wollstonecraft dismisses the possibility of social reform from an enlightened monarchy (Boos 1976, 75). Wollstonecraft recognized that class oppression was inextricably bound up with the oppression of women, and accordingly the Vindication is also an attack on “the pestiferous purple which renders the progress of civilization a curse” (Wollstonecraft 1982, 99). Boos notes that Wollstonecraft is to be commended for demanding social reform and the rights of women, while Macaulay’s Letters “merit notice for their original opinions on an idiosyncratic range of social questions” (Boos 1976, 64-65). Thus, although the germ for the radical social reforms of the Vindication can be traced back to the Letters, “it remained,” states Boos, “for Wollstonecraft to emphasize Macaulay’s feminism as a separate topic” and “associate with it the revolutionary belief in human equality” (1976, 75).

This evaluation of Macaulay’s Letters is reiterated in “Catharine Macaulay: Historian and Political Reformer.’’ Again Macaulay is praised for her revolutionary views of sexual egalitarianism; Boos and Boos even go so far as to suggest that Macaulay is the first writer to produce a sustained indictment of the assumption that there are innate sexual differences. What will prove significant for an account of the Letters is the separation that Boos and Boos see between the feminist aspects of Macaulay’s arguments and the other strands of the Letters. Boos and Boos see the issue of educating women equally with men treated as a separate argument from the way we learn: “in addition

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to its revolutionary prescription of sexual egalitarianism, part 1 of the Letters offers a thorough discussion of the relationship between learning and society” (Boos and Boos 1980,56). This separation of ideas is echoed in the conclusion: “Catharine Macaulay remains a significant but unacknowledged contributor to feminist thought and persuasive advocate for human liberation and social justice” (63, emphasis added).

Bridget Hill, in her recent biography of Macaulay, The Republican Virago, also treats the Letters as a diverse collection; indeed Hill states that “the diversity of contents may reflect awareness that time was running out for her. She wanted to express her ideas on a host of questions before it was too late” (Hill 1992, 158). For Hill, the Letters mark a change in Macaulay’s political outlook: “She was now convinced that progress, whether political or social, could only come about through the extension and improvement of education” ( 162-63). But such progress is not to be understood in terms of an improvement in the political or sexual position of women. Hill states that political equality was, for Macaulay, impossible unless the electorate was educated: “Any progress for women, she implied, relied on their receiving more and a better education” (160). Hill emphasizes that while Macaulay was clearly sympathetic to women, she regarded herself principally as a historian and a political polemicist; indeed, it seems to demonstrate Macaulay’s intellectual priorities that only Letters on Education focuses on women.

An initial reading of the Letters on Education would seem to support the assertion that the Letters does simply consist of a collection of arguments on the various themes of education, sexual equality, and social justice. The early letters in part 1 are concerned with the upbringing and care of infants and small children; Macaulay discusses such topics as the benefits of a lively nurse for children, the advantages of learning needlework (for both sexes), and suitable reading matter for young children. In letter 4, she gives advice on the suitable nutrition for infants and young children. In a typical mixing of health and moral advice, Macaulay discusses the use of gravy for infants: “When I recommended the use of gravy for sucking infants, Hortensia, it was merely on the notion of its being the best corrector of the acidities of human milk, and not with the view of bringing them up to be devourers of animal substances.” Indeed, she believes that a mainly vegetarian diet is most suitable for the stomachs of children, a belief bolstered by a sense of the cruelty of meat eating: “the cruel necessity which our wants impose on us, to inflict that fate on other beings which would be terrible to ourselves, is an evil of sufficient weight were the use of animal diet confined within as moderate limits as the present state of things will admit” (Macaulay 1974,38).


The later letters of part 1 discuss adult social and moral behavior. Macaulay expounds on such topics as fashion, politeness, sobriety, flattery, and male rakes. It is in these later letters that we also find Macaulay’s views on female education and the question of innate sexual differences. Yet these letters on women appear to be isolated comments, as the letter following them contains a discussion on the education of princes. The overall impression of part 1 seems accurately described by Boos as collection of letters “discussing an ideal pattern of instruction from infancy onward, with digressive comments on the proper environment for young people, the equality of the sexes, and romantic love” (Boos 1976, 65). I t would also appear that the volume as a whole contains three apparently separate parts: the first on education; the second on society, detailing the defects and successes of ancient civilizations; and the third a revision of Macaulay’s earlier Treatise on the Immutability of Moral Truth. Indeed, Boos claims that the Letters comprise “three separate books, each well-written [sic] and unified, but unlikely to appeal to the same reader” (Boos 1976,651.

Viewing the Letters as a collection of different interests, an impression further emphasized by the structure of the book, may lead us to the conclusion that, unlike Wollstonecraft, Macaulay was not offering a sustained argument for the equality of women; nor did she seem to recognize the connection between this equality and social reform. But even a fleeting glance at Macaulay’s life and work seems to support the need for a reexamination of the Letters on Education.’

Macaulay’s best known work, History of England, comprehensive, detailed, and 3,549 pages in length, demonstrates her knowledge of political philosophy and contains criticism of the work of Hobbes, Hume, Burke, and others. Her History, in turn, drew fire from Hume. Hume’s letter in the European Magazine is a criticism of Macaulay’s political interpretation of the facts, not of her abilities as a thinker or a historian. Macaulay’s carefully argued response to this letter in the same magazine provoked the perhaps partisan editorial comment, “it is unnecessary to observe, that this celebrated scotch [sic] historian, in the present correspondence, is manifestly inferior to the lady, at least in argument” (European Magazine 1783, 332). Not only is it clear from this exchange that Macaulay was actively involved in English politics, but Macaulay can be credited, Hill argues, with shaping radical ideas in England, France, and the United States.

As the first historian in the eighteenth century to attempt a republican history of the seventeenth century, she deserves more study than she has so far received. Her History-and its popularity-illustrates how vital the seventeenth century still was to both Commonwealth men and Wilkites. It makes the point that any understanding of eighteenth-century radicalism

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must start from the seventeenth century. Her influence on radical ideas in England, and the contribution she made to the changing nature of radicalism in the last three decades of the eighteenth century, made her History and political polemic of no small importance. Her role in familiarizing Americans with the history of the seventeenth century and reinforcing their conviction that events of that earlier century were being replayed in their time . . . has not been lost on American historians who have recognized her importance. That her writings also had relevance for many French patriots in the early years of the Revolution is less well known. (Hill 1992, 250)

Clearly there is a disparity between Macaulay the politically involved historian and Macaulay whose only role in early feminist (or protofeminist) thought is supposed to be as the tame conservative influence on Wollstonecraft. Further- more, it is curious that the respected writer of sustained attacks on the work of others would have failed to appreciate the importance of sustained arguments in her own work.

On the contrary, I wish to argue, the Letters on Education do contain a self-contained and sustained argument for the equality of women, although perhaps of an unusual or unexpected kind. Furthermore, once we examine the letters of part 1, in which Macaulay discusses the situation of women, in the context of parts 2 and 3 which explain her view of the progress of humankind, we shall be able to see how the equality of women is interconnected with the philosophical ideas underpinning Macaulay’s view of social and political reform.

Macaulay was part of a large group of eighteenth-century intellectuals who were influenced by Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The denial of innate ideas and the argument for the human mind as a tabula rasa, were perhaps the most eagerly embraced of his views by such writers as Johnson, Cowper, Chesterfield, and Gray. Part of the appeal of Locke’s attack on the doctrine of innate ideas was its implication for intellectual or mental equality. Using the influences of Locke, Macaulay could have devoted her time merely to explaining and thereby excusing the character and conduct of the eighteenth-century woman; but as she says herself, she is “no apologist for the conduct of women” (Macaulay 1974, 214). Instead, Macaulay sets herself the task of arguing for the equal education of women, an argument that, as I shall show, ultimately develops into an argument for equality itself.

Macaulay states in the preface to Letters on Education that an understanding of the mind is necessary for the moral improvement of human beings, for


without such an understanding we shall not be able to formulate a principled, uniform system of education that can produce moral excellence. Macaulay explicitly declares her Lockean foundations for this understanding of the mind in the introductory first letter. What we are and, more important for Macaulay, whether we are good or bad is not inherited or innate but is purely the effect of our environment.

There is not a virtue or a vice that belongs to humanity, which we do not make ourselves. There is not a wretch who ends his miserable being on a wheel, as the forfeit of his offenses against society, who may not throw the whole blame of his misdemea- nors on his education; who may not look up to the very government, by whose severe laws he is made to suffer, as the author of his misfortunes; and who may not with justice utter the hardest imprecations on those to whom the charge of his youth was entrusted, and to those with whom he associated in the early periods of his life. (Macaulay 1974, 11)

If crime and vice are effects of environment and education, Macaulay argues, then careful and correct education and parenting are vital. Macaulay cautions parents to remember “that the misery or bliss of your posterity, in a great measure depends upon yourselves, and that an inattention to your duty, may draw on your head the guilt of many generations” (Macaulay 1974, 14). It should be, therefore, no surprise to find that the majority of the early letters are devoted to discussions of infant care and juvenile education, as every aspect of a child’s environment can affect the development of the childish mind.

What is interesting about Macaulay’s account of the education of children is that it extends beyond a typical account of discipline and the parental role as moral exemplar. As we have already seen, Macaulay’s advice on the healthfulness of a mainly vegetarian diet for children is not directed solely at the physical health of the child; the eating of meat and the moral development of the child seem inextricably linked. Macaulay holds that meat eating “must naturally tend to weaken that sympathy which Nature has given to man, as the best guard against the abuse of the extensive power with which she has entrusted him” (Macaulay 1974,39). The role of education and environment in cultivating sympathy is constantly emphasized throughout part 1. I t is only in part 2, however, when Macaulay argues that sympathy is the source of all human virtue, that its importance is clearly brought out.

Macaulay does not restrict her discussion to those aspects of a child’s life that could seem to have a direct effect on moral development. She also stresses the necessity of a calm and consistent environment, which will affect more indirectly the development of moral character. Harsh discipline of a child, she believes, produces an environment in which the child’s mind is often disturbed and “violently shaken by rigorous sensations.” This results, in later life, in an

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adult in whom “the temper becomes fretful and impatient, and the spirits are thrown into disorder by every thwarting incident which occurs” (Macaulay 1974,981.

The significance of these aspects of the early letters of part 1 starts to become clear when we examine letters 21 to 23. A close examination of these three crucial letters allows Macaulay’s comments on childcare to be read as part of an argument for the equality of women, for it is in these letters that Macaulay argues for the connection between moral principles and education that will produce moral excellence in the Lockean mind.

In letter 21, Macaulay discusses the need for moral education: without an understanding of the principles of morality and the law, one can never attain moral excellence, or contribute to legal reform. This attention to moral education is vital if Macaulay plans to follow Locke in dismissing the existence of innate moral principles and replacing them with an educated morality grounded on reasoning. But Macaulay’s work here is not merely derivative of Locke’s. Her recognition that moral principles are not universally applied is clearly based on the third chapter of the first book of Locke’s Essay, but her central concerns are the reasons this is true. According to Macaulay, people’s lack of knowledge of the principles of morality is the reason their “notions of right and wrong are loose, unconnected, and inconsistent” (Macaulay 1974, 198). Without proper moral education, “even those who bear the specious title of philosophers are apt to be dazzled by the brilliancy [sic] of success, and to treat qualities and characters differently according to the smiles and frowns of fortune” (198-99). To avoid the inconsistencies of which we are all so guilty (when, for example, we find the crime of murder in a poor man to be statecraft in a leader), Macaulay argues that morals must be taught on “immutable principles”: principles that are not innate but are grounded in reason.

It is one thing, Hortensia, to educate a citizen, and another to educate a philosopher. The mere citizen will have learnt to obey the laws of his country, but he will never understand those principles on which all laws ought to be established; and without such an understanding, he can never be religious on rational principles, or truly moral; nor will he ever have any of that active wisdom which is necessary for co-operation in any plan of reformation. But to teach morals on an immutable fitness, has never been the practice in any system of education yet extant. Hence all our notions of right and wrong are loose, unconnected, and inconsistent. Hence the murderer, in one situation, is extolled to the skies; and in another, is followed with reproach even beyond the grave. (Macaulay 1974,198)

These immutable principles seem to play a dual role in the education of the child. Their primary function is to provide the individual with a consistent set


of moral guidelines, but Macaulay also seems to suggest that these principles ultimately produce a consistent environment in which to educate a child. Without a consistent environment, the good work of the parent may become undone at any moment. As we have seen, this consistent environment for the child is constantly emphasized in the early letters. Given the role that these immutable principles play in the education of children, and, as we shall see, their status as the foundations of Macaulay’s argument for the equal education of women, it may seem a weakness in Macaulay’s work that she does not describe in detail how the immutable principles of morality are to be established or give examples of the principles themselves in the first part of the Letters. Indeed, not until part 3 does Macaulay explain her focus on the function of these principles.

Three deceptively brief arguments are given in letter 21 for the equal education of men and women. The first is based on the consistency of moral principles.

That there is but one rule of right for the conduct of all rational beings; consequently that true virtue in one sex must be equally so in the other, whenever a proper opportunity calls for its exertion; and, vice versa, what is vice in one sex, cannot have a different property when found in the other. (Macaulay 1974,201)

The moral education of both sexes must be the same, and it is clear that by this Macaulay means a general principled education rather than the sexes sharing a moral education but having a separate general education.

Macaulay’s second reason for the equal education of women is that “true wisdom, which is never found at variance with rectitude, is as useful to women as to men; because it is necessary to the highest degree of happiness, which can never exist with ignorance” (1974,201). Contrary to Rousseau’s arguments in Ernile, she implies, keeping women in ignorance will not secure their virtue or their happiness. This second argument also seems to hint at the utility of educating women: the wise woman will benefit society. This seems plausible considering Macaulay’s comments earlier in letter 21 on the necessity of wisdom for social reform. The final argument addresses the injustice of keeping women in ignorance when wisdom is necessary to enter the next world.

Lastly, That as on our first entrance into another world, our state of happiness may possibly depend on the degree of perfection we have attained in this, we cannot justly lessen, in one sex or the other, the means by which perfection, that is another word for wisdom, is acquired. (1974, 201-2)

Thus Macaulay intends to connect the development of moral excellence with the need for the equal education of women. Moral excellence, because of

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the form of the mind, can be produced only through a consistent education grounded on immutable principles; and a n y attempt at producing this moral excellence will invariably entail a call for equality of education. To deny women the same education as men is to deny the consistency of moral principles and to ignore our own interest in a morally excellent society. To deny them any kind of education, furthermore, is not only to remove the possibility of their happiness in this world and the next, but to act with injustice.

Although Macaulay’s arguments for the equal education of women seem consistent, a tension is apparent between these reasoned arguments for the promotion of women and her occasional tirades against the behavior of her contemporaries. In letter 22, Macaulay expresses her disdain for anyone who still believes that there are innate character differences between the two sexes; she declares that the “particular foibles and vices” displayed by women “orig- inate in situation and education only” (Macaulay 1974,206). Yet earlier in the same letter, she castigates women for their complicity in their own subjugation: “suffer them to idolize their persons, to throw away their life in the pursuit of trifles, and to indulge in the gratification of the meaner passions, and they will heartily join in the sentence of their degradation” (205). Macaulay recognizes that her reader may be shocked by this “fit of moral anger” and that the reader may cry that she “expected an apology, instead of a libel, on women,” but Macaulay does nothing to reply to this charge (214). The reader is left unsure as to why, although Macaulay can trace all the sources of these women’s vices to their situation and education, they are still held, in some way, morally accountable for their behavior.

This tension seems to indicate a certain recalcitrant or conservative quality in Macaulay’s work. Although she clearly recognizes the reasons that women remain oppressed, she seems to be making no demand for any kind of societal reform. Instead, Macaulay appears to be content to wait “till that period arrives in which women will act wisely,” suggesting that meanwhile we should “amuse ourselves in talking of their follies” (207). Moreover, this tension stems directly from ideas that are central to Macaulay’s work. The emphasis she places on the immutability of moral principles requires that judgment of people’s behavior must not vary depending on who they are. Macaulay could not help but observe that the compliance of women prolonged their degradation, and therefore she was bound to criticize this as harshly as she criticized behavior in men that also maintained women’s oppression. Men prefer “to give up the advantages we might derive from the perfection of our fellow associates, than to own that nature has been just in the equal distribution of her favours.” But she adds that we should mark how readily women assent to this situation, “not from humility I assure you, but merely to preserve with character those fond vanities on which they set their hearts” (205).


A comparison with Wollstonecraft’s comments in the Vindication of the Rights of Woman may be useful here in understanding Macaulay’s criticisms of women. Wollstonecraft also offers scathing criticism of these same women while recognizing the social forces that produced their vices; but her commentS can be understood within the framework of a call for social reform. Wollstone- craft sneers at a woman of fashion she used to know who considered “a distinguishing taste and puny appetite the height of all human perfection” (Wollstonecraft 1982, 130). Wollstonecraft remembers seeing this woman “neglect all the duties of life, yet recline with self-complacency [sic] on a sofa, and boast of her want of appetite as a proof of delicacy” (130). Seeing women in this deplorable state, says Wollstonecraft, shows that “it is time to effect a revolution in female manners-time to restore them to their lost dignity-and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world” (132). If Macaulay, like Wollstonecraft, is arguing for some kind of general social reform, then her criticisms of women could also be understood as implied criticisms of the social structures that produced these women, and as challenges to these women to self-reform. It is here that we must let go of the assumptions about Macaulay’s work produced by its relationship to that of Wollstonecraft. Simply because Wollstonecraft incorporated Macaulay’s arguments for equal education into a call for a total reform of the position of women, we should not be assume, without further investigation, that Macaulay’s Letters on Education contains no similar arguments.

Macaulay does indeed suggest that the time is ripe for change. Men, she has noticed, “have relaxed in their tyranny over women,” so much so that if women were able to make intelligent use of the little power they do possess, “they might carry every point of any importance to their honour and happiness” (Macaulay 1974,207). This passage implies that Macaulay was not unaware of the possibilities of some kind of change. Although we are accus- tomed to expecting an argument for equal education to be part of a more general plan of reform for the position of women, we should consider whether Macaulay’s ideas on education and morality were actually intended to produce, by themselves, some kind of reform in the position of women.

What Macaulay really might be offering is a discussion of social reform, but of a perhaps unexpected kind: it is a discussion of the moral reform of the human mind. This mental reform appears to work in two ways. On a practical level, an improvement in the general level of virtue could certainly bring about some kind of social reform. If men and women have an understanding of the workings of legal reform and the need for equality in our treatment of others, both characteristics that will be produced by a proper moral education, then they might work toward some change in the position of women. Even though Macaulay recognizes that her plans for education may be available only to the ruling classes, their improved virtue, she claims in the preface, “would be felt in the improved virtue of all the subordinate classes of citizens” (Macaulay

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1974, v-vi). Thus it would seem that Macaulay’s final letter in part 1 on the education of princes is neither a digression from her arguments for the equality of women nor an expression of the desire to maintain the societal status quo; instead, it appears to be a pragmatic recognition of how change could take places4

On a more theoretical level, Macaulay’s guidelines for education seem to entail the need for a consistent society in which that education could take place. If ideas are not innate but are to be learned through rational exercise of the mind, then the pupil will learn best in a society that demonstrates consistency in its principles and judgments. The argument for equal education in the Letters also acknowledges the need to give women an equal position in society, as this will be the best way to produce a suitable environment for the education of both sexes. Simply allowing women equal access to the same learning as men without an environment conducive to mental development will deny them the same chance for moral excellence. Not only will women’s unequal position in society affect their education, it will ultimately affect male moral excellence, too. If women remain uneducated, or if they are educated but their position in society is allowed to remain unaltered, then it is doubtful that men can achieve moral excellence in this inconsistent and unjust environment. Indeed, the opening comments of letter 24 appear to refer to this construct ion.

After all that has been advanced [in letters 21-23], Hortensia, the happiness and perfection of the two sexes are so reciprocally dependent on one another that, till both are reformed, there is no expecting excellence in either. (Macaulay 1974,216)

Thus part 1 of Macaulay’s Letters on Education can be understood as a discussion of social reform. Macaulay’s view of social reform is a kind of moral reform of the human mind that requires principled education, a consistent environment, and equality both in the education and the position of women. Like Wollstonecraft, Macaulay is criticizing the social structures that produced the indolent lady of fashion, and she does challenge women to self-reform. Both the inconsistency of the social structures that oppress women and the seeming acquiescence of women to this oppression must be overcome to produce moral growth of both the individual and society. Unlike Wollstone- craft, however, both Macaulay’s criticism and her challenge stem not from a wide-ranging call for justice but from a particular view of morality, a view that is further developed in the other parts of the Letters.

IV

Part 2 of the Letters is an extension of part 1 in that it discusses the role government should play in the moral growth of the individual and society. In


part 1 Macaulay states explicitly that government is also responsible for the moral development of an indi~idual.~ She stresses the importance of proper moral education for the legal reforms necessary to produce the morally excellent society. In part 2, she offers an account of the source and development of human virtue, an account that provides the philosophical justifications for the views on education and the equality of women in part 1.

Government, Macaulay contends, plays an educational role in the development of what she calls the “benevolent duties of life” that fall to citizens or members of society. Macaulay now makes explicit what she only alluded to in the final letter of part 1: that it is the task of the higher classes, once properly educated, to frame laws that will “enlighten the understandings [sic] of the citizens in the essentials of right and wrong” (Macaulay 1974, 237). The importance of this role of government becomes clear when we see the relationship Macaulay perceives between the laws of a society and the moral development of its citizens.

To understand this relationship, we need first to examine Macaulay’s con- cept of virtue. In letter 8 of part 2, Macaulay gives the most explicit statement in all of her letters of her notion of virtue: “All human virtue [is] found to proceed from equity; consequently, if the principle of equity itself owes its source in the human mind to the feelings of sympathy, all human virtue must derive its source from this useful affection” (Macaulay 1974, 275). Macaulay believes that humans bear a natural sympathy: when we see pain or unhappi- ness in another, our feelings of sympathy enable us to imagine ourselves in the other’s place. This sympathy leads to our acquiring the ideas of equity and an understanding of the utility of benevolence. By equity, Macaulay means the forbearance of our own gratification in respect to the needs and wants of others (including, it would seem, animals). While equity finds its source or inclina- tion in our original sympathetic feelings for others, it becomes recognized as the principle for all virtue only through its approval by reason; Macaulay is clear that morality is to be rational and principled. While sympathy is natural to all human minds, it will lie latent “till put into motion by the influence of some corresponding impression” (1974, 276). Moreover, it is not enough for this sympathy to be activated; it must be fostered: “[its] growth and prevalence in a great measure depends on the repetition of those impressions which are in their nature adapted to affect [it]” (276). With this account of the source of human virtue, it is clear why Macaulay constantly emphasizes in part 1 that the education and upbringing of children should aim toward the development of their sympathy.

Macaulay holds that the prime sources of these impressions are law, example, precept, and custom. Therefore it is government’s responsibility to use these sources properly, to produce “that improvement on which true civilization depends” (Macaulay 1974, 276). Sympathetic feelings, if properly nur- tured, will help lead the way to a morally excellent society.

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I t is known that the power of custom over the mind arises from such a repetition of the same impression, as acts to the weaken- ing or destroying [ofJ the force of every impression of a contrary tendency. Could we therefore, by the spirit of our laws, exclude from society the operation of every impression which partook of the smallest tincture of cruelty, and did we encourage the operation of every impression which had a benevolent tendency, it appears probable, that we should exalt the sympathiz- ing feeling to a degree which might act more forcibly than the coercion of rigorous laws-to the restraining all acts of vio- lence, and consequently all acts which militate against the public peace. (Macaulay 1974, 276-77)

Macaulay is so convinced of the connection between laws and the development of a morally excellent society that she offers suggestions for how such necessities as the slaughter of animals for food and the execution of criminals can be carried out so as to produce the appropriate impressions in the mind of the public. For executions, “the ceremonies that attend this melancholy act, should be made as aweful [ s i c ] as possible,” but the execution itself should be in private so as to prevent any impression that may prove too much of a shock to the sympathetic or “contribute to steal [steel] the hearts of the more insensible” (Macaulay 1974, 279).

Although Macaulay does not discuss the importance of legal reforms regarding the position of women, it is unlikely that she was unaware of the specific implications about women in part 2 of the Letters. On the basis of her arguments in both parts 1 and 2, she seems to believe that laws regarding the political and social position of women must be reformed to create a consistent and morally positive environment for the development of all the citizens of a particular society. Yet it is here, perhaps, that a weakness in Macaulay’s views may lie. While these legal reforms would have the aim of benefiting women, we can see that their overall aim would include the moral reform both of women and of society as a whole. This implies, unfortunately, that granting rights to women equally with men would depend not so much on recognizing gross injustice as on acknowledging the potential moral benefits for both women as individuals and society as a whole. Thus it is possible that Macaulay’s views could justify leaving in place laws that a modem reader would consider oppressive to women.

These implications of Macaulay’s views are borne out by her earlier outline of an ideal form of democratic government in Letter to Signor Paoli, the only work other than the Letters in which Macaulay (briefly) discusses the position and education of women. There, Macaulay emphasizes the prevention of an “aristocratical accumulation of property” (Macaulay 1767, 36). She believes that such an accumulation would lead to corruption and a disproportionate

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distribution of power, ultimately destroying any democratic government (the only kind that Macaulay believes would produce moral reform). Thus we find Macaulay, in a discussion of the inheritance of property, recommending that estates should be divided equally between all male heirs and that women should be barred from bringing dowries in marriage. Although Macaulay includes, as a condition of the reforms, a provision for the proper education of female offspring, these proposed reforms clearly do nothing to promote the position of women, and indeed could even take away the little economic power women had at that time (see Staves 1989). Yet while these apparent implications of Macaulay’s views cannot, perhaps, be excused, an examination of part 3 of the Letters provides a rationale for them.

In the final letters of part 2, Macaulay addresses the crucial question of the moral principles on which government will base the laws necessary to produce moral improvement in society. In letters 12 and 13, Macaulay stipulates that the morally excellent society, the well-ordered society, is the society based on Christian principles. Although Macaulay is well aware of the corrupt soci- eties that have evolved under Christian rule, she argues that these are cases of abuse of religious sentiment, and states that we should ask instead “whether the religious sentiment itself, when rendered as pure as the disinterested reason of man is capable of making it, is or is not useful to the rectitude of morals, and consequently to the happiness and good order of society” (Macaulay 1974,323).

Macaulay also addresses one of the potential philosophical objections to the use of religious principles in the government of society: that human laws are sufficient to produce a well-ordered society. In reply, she argues that laws without the backing of religion cannot always influence the agency of humans; furthermore, even the most virtuous of minds may fall into indifference or despair at the thought of a universe that is not ordered. Macaulay also points out the positive side to a society based on religious principles: the recognition that we are governed by a mind of pure moral excellence will produce in us the desire to be virtuous.

It is important to notice that in Macaulay’s philosophy, the role that religious principles play in society is, above all else, a practical role. Macaulay states that the government should ensure that religion is taught as the practical way to moral improvement and that the notion of religious faith is demystified. The fundamental tenet that should be taught is that humans are naturally moral creatures, who, using their reason properly, will continue to develop and improve on their propensity for virtue.

O n the instructions to the people, government would do well to prescribe the following rules: that all the mysteries of faith and such metaphysical arguments as are disputable, be carefully avoided by the preachers. That they should enter largely, and

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dwell particularly, on the practical doctrines of the Christian religion. That they should represent man as a creature endued with powers capable of meliorating [sic] his own natural situation, and that of the greater part of the brute creation. They should insist that the powers of human reason can never be so properly employed, as when they are enlarging the boundaries of good, and narrowing the empire of evil. (Macaulay 1974, 334-35)

The role that a practical and demystified religion plays in the ordering of a morally excellent society is the link between the first two parts of the Letters and the third and final part. Part 3 appears to comprise the “observations on religious and metaphysical subjects” promised in the full title of the Letters. It can be read as a separate work discussing such topics as the origin of evil, the divine perfections, and free will and necessity.6 Of the eighteen letters it contains, the first nine provide a critical discussion of Bolingbroke’s views on the attributes of God and the characteristics of human nature, and six form a reply to the doctrine of free will. Yet these letters also contain Macaulay’s arguments for the existence of an afterlife (and its relationship to human virtue) and for moral necessity (and its connection to education), which provide crucial foundations for many of the arguments in the two earlier parts of the Letters. Indeed, Macaulay herself states, with reference to part 3, that her main reason for reprinting her earlier Treatise on the Immutability of Mural Truth here is that “the principles and rules of education now laid before the public, are founded on the metaphysical observations contained therein” (Macaulay 1974, vi). Moreover, she claims, “A full persuasion of the equity and goodness of God, with a view to the purity and benevolence for which the precepts of our religion are so eminently distinguished, has been the author’s sole guide in forming her instructions [for education]” (1974, iii).

Macaulay begins part 3 with a discussion of the existence of moral evil. Evil, for Macaulay, cannot be necessary, for that would contradict her belief in an omnipotent and wholly good God. Instead, Macaulay believes that God allows evil to be present in the world because this will ultimately produce greater happiness than if evil were not to exist at all. Macaulay believes that the creature who is as perfect as possible will not achieve as much happiness on the whole (and it must not be forgotten that Macaulay sees perfection as necessary for happiness) as the creature who starts in a lesser state and gradually draws nearer to the goal of perfection. We are driven to strive for this perfection not because of self-love or self-interest, but because our reason dictates the wish to imitate (however faintly) the divine virtues; indeed, the pleasure we receive from knowing we are imitating God, and his pleasure at this, is a further motivation for our behavior. The standard for our behavior is the divinely


authored invariable rule of right, the immutable principles, for all moral agents.

Macaulay clearly shows how she believes the immutable principles that play a vital role in the arguments for the equality of women are established. The “metaphysical” underpinnings for Macaulay’s argument, moreover, are visible in letter 2 1 of part 1, in which she contends that keeping women in ignorance will deprive them of the possibility of aiming for perfection and thus prevent their happiness. Human beings’ increased perfection, and thus, happiness, is evidently part of the divine plan for the world; therefore, denying women these possibilities would appear to contradict human nature itself, a nature that is part of the divine plan.

Macaulay does admit in part 3 that the virtuous person will not always receive happiness in this life. Because an omnipotent, perfectly just, perfectly benevolent divine being will reward virtue (and punish vice), this must therefore mean that there is a future life in which virtue finds its just reward.

But even the virtuous man cannot always by his virtue obtain happiness in this life, or avoid ending his short existence in a condition of misery; therefore, this is a state of trial aptly fitted for the exercise and improvement of that virtue which will find its fruition by an enlarged and more permanent enjoyment of its excellence in another state. But if there be no other state for man to enjoy the undisturbed exertion of his intellectual faculties, virtue is defrauded of its just expectations, God is not omnipotent, or he is a being physically determined to evil. (Macaulay 1974,380)

While this is a rather insubstantial argument for the existence of an afterlife, it is important for the argument in letter 21 of part 1 that to deny women education may be to remove the possibility of their happiness in the next world. Assuming that readers of the Letters share Macaulay’s faith, they should agree that a refusal to educate women equally with men would again appear to be a direct contravention of the divine plan for human beings7

If, however, the increased perfection of humankind is part of the divine plan, we must ask whether humans have free will; whether they are free to chose the path to perfection. Macaulay argues that humans are bound by moral rather than physical necessity. Once we understand good, we must choose it; in this we follow God, who sees what is perfect and, in his infinite wisdom, chooses perfection. Indeed, Macaulay claims that God’s own subjection to moral necessity “is the peculiar glory of the divine character” (Macaulay 1974, 462). To argue that humans have a free will and are not determined in this way accords neither with our nature nor with the path of virtue: “The nearer approaches which all finite creatures make to the perfections of their creator,

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the more they will be brought under the blessed subjection of being necessarily determined in their volitions by right principles of conduct” (462).

Given Macaulay’s belief in moral necessity, the role of education in the moral development of the human mind takes on a particular urgency. To follow the path of perfection, we must understand the “immutable principles.” More- over, it is not enough that we merely learn the right principles of conduct; we must have “the knowledge also of the mechanism of the human mind, which includes the knowledge of its discipline,” for this will be “not only an [sic] useful but a necessary auxiliary in the contest between wisdom and folly, between the dictates of the understanding and the tumultuous desires of the passions” (Macaulay 1974,426). Returning to part 1 of the Letters, we can see why Macaulay focuses on demonstrating the mechanism of the human mind and how it can be educated, rather than giving an account of the actual rules of conduct for humans.

Thus it would appear that the second and third parts of the Letters should be read in conjunction with the first part. The second part continues the first with a discussion of the development of sympathy and the consistent environment, both of which are necessary for moral excellence, and shows how they contribute to the development of excellence. Part 3 provides the general metaphysical foundations for the Letters as a whole, and operates explicitly in letter 21 of part 1, in which Macaulay argues for the equal education of women.

V

Although the Letters can now be seen as a sustained work of philosophy rather than a collection of Macaulay’s opinions on a diverse range of topics, the examination of part 1 in conjunction with parts 2 and 3 once again raises the question of Macaulay’s intellectual priorities. The arguments in part 1 for the equal education of women may now seem merely incidental to a more general discussion of social and political reform, a reform based, moreover, on a particular religious view. Nevertheless, an examination of this brand of ethicoreligious reform can provide the key to judging Macaulay’s arguments for the equality of women.

A dominant theme throughout all of Macaulay’s historical and political writings is the doctrine of “postmillennialism.”8 Blending Enlightenment notions of progress with her own religious beliefs, Macaulay held that God’s plan for the world was a gradual improvement in human nature and society leading to a period of perfection on earth heralding the Second Coming.’ Macaulay envisioned this period to be one “when the iron sceptre of arbitrary sway shall be broken; when righteousness shall prevail over the whole earth, and a currect system of equity take place in the conduct of man” (Macaulay 1790, 21, Macaulay’s emphasis). Humans do not play a passive role in this plan; both individually and collectively, they can work, through the use of their reason,


toward improvement. Thus the role of education in developing and perfecting reason is of central importance for carrying out the divine plan.

In Macaulay’s political and historical work, the doctrine of postmillennialism is an underlying assumption, but it is not explored or defended. Her History of England is a moral history, an examination of the progress (and regress) of humankind produced through both the collective contribution of govem- ments and the roles of key individuals. For Macaulay, the fighting of the parliamentary army (of the Long Parliament) was “not a trade in blood, but an excertion [sic] of principle, and obedience to the call of conscience, and their conduct was not only void of insolence, but benevolent and human” (Macaulay 1768, 4: 181-82). Oliver Cromwell, by contrast, is criticized for allowing his self-interest to contribute to the destruction of a potentially morally progressive government, a criticism that indicates what Macaulay saw as the vital role of moral character in determining the course of English history. In the Letters on Education, however, Macaulay does seem to provide an examination of the moral views underlying her historical and political works. Clearly, parts 1 and 2 explain how education will perfect human reason and human society, while part 3 expands on the religious foundations for her “perfectionist” doctrine.

If the Letters are a philosophical discussion of Macaulay’s “perfectionist” view, how are we to understand the assertion that part 1 offers a sustained argument for the equality of women? It may appear that the arguments for the equal education of women are incidental to Macaulay’s central doctrine of perfectionism. Yet this is to misunderstand Macaulay, and to assume that, like Wollstonecraft, she had to be writing a political polemic. Macaulay is offering a moral vision; not a vision of the end of injustice but a vision of a morally excellent society that would require the equality of women. Whether Macaulay argued for the equality of women merely because it was a condition for the morally ordered, well-governed society is open to question. What remains clear, however, is that given Macaulay’s philosophical and political views, both equal education and the equality of women are not only unavoid- able but divinely ordained.

Could Macaulay have written another Vindication? I t would seem not. Macaulay clearly recognized the connection between social reform and the equality of women, but such reforms as she envisaged were more for the individual development of the female mind than for some kind of wholesale social change. If the position of women did not restrict moral progress, it would seem that Macaulay would have accepted women’s suffering as one of the evils of an imperfect world. Yet although Macaulay did not write like Wollstone- craft, she did offer a sustained and consistent argument for the equality of women, albeit of a rather idiosyncratic kind.

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NOTES

1. The Letters were first published in 1787, reprinted in 1790, and then again in 1974.

2. See, e.g., Miriam Brody Kramnick in an introduction to Wollstonecraft’s Vindi- cation: “The issue of female emancipation was not a central concern for Macaulay, who wrote like a feminist but did not write the feminist manifesto. Macaulay is concerned equally with the management of infants and the education of princes. It was for Wollstonecraft to isolate and emphasize the issue of education for women” (Wollstone- craft 1982,40).

3. This rather brief account cannot do justice to Macaulay’s character or achieve- ments. For an account that does do Macaulay justice, see Hill’s biography.

4. This would appear to connect with Macaulay’s political views. Lynne Withey contends, “the republic vs. monarchy issue was not so important to her as insuring the existence of democracy, whatever the form of government” (1976,65-66).

5. In the introductory letter to part 1, Macaulay notes that the wrongdoer may “look up to the very government by whose severe laws he is made to suffer, as the author of his misfortunes” (Macaulay 1974, 1 1).

6. Macaulay’s views here have been criticized as unoriginal. The discussion of religious matters in part 3 does, however, have the merit of being an impressive display of learning.

7. I t is interesting to note that Macaulay believes that God intends the perfection and happiness of all of his creatures. Macaulay speculates on the possibility ofan afterlife for animals, “where they may enjoy a larger portion of their rational faculties and that a remembrance of their past suffering and state of degradation may add greatly to their enjoyment” (1974,357). Macaulay finds it a little hard to imagine this afterlife being extended to insects, but argues that if it is not, then their earthly life must be one “unmixed with sufferings” which would thus be “esteemed a blessing” (1974,358).

8. The claims in this paragraph are based on the work of Lynne E. Withey (1976). Bridget Hill also believes that a claim of postmillennialism as central to Macaulay’s ethicoreligious beliefs is valid (Hill 1992, 154).

9. For specific comments on this see Macaulay (1790).

REFERENCES

Boos, Florence. 1976. Catharine Macaulay’s Letters on education (1790): An early feminist polemic. University of Michigan Papers in Women’s Studies 2( 2): 64-78.

Boos, Florence, and William Boos. 1980. Catharine Macaulay: Historian and political reformer. lntmtional Journal of Women’s S tdes 3(6): 49-65.

The European Magazine (London). 1783. Editorial Note. (November): 332-4. Hill, Bridget. 1992. The republican wirago: The life and times of Catharine Macaukzy,

Hume, David. 1783. Letter to the editor. The European Magazine (London). (Novem-

Locke, John. 1690. An essay concerning human understanding. London: Thomas Basset. Macaulay, Catharine. 1763-83. History of England, From the accession ofJames I to that of

historian. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

ber): 331-32.

the Brunswick line. 8 vols. [vol. 4, 17681. London: J. Nourse.


. 1767. Loose remmks on certain positions to be found in Mr. Hobbes’s “Philosophical rudiments of government and society,” with a short sketch of a democratical form of gouernwnt, In a letter to Signor Paoli. London: printed for T. Davies.

.1783. A Treatise on the Immu&lity of Moral Tnrth. London.

. 1790. Obserwations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, on the Rewolution in France, in a Letter for the Right Hon. The Earl of Stanhope. London: printed for the author by J. Coleric and sold by W. Stewart, bookseller.

. [I7871 1974. Letters on Education with observations a Religious and Metaphysical Subjects. Gina Luria, ed. Reprint. London and New York: Garland.

Staves, Susan. 1989. “The liberty of the she-subject of England”: Rights, rhetoric and the female Thucydides. Curdozo S t h s in Law and Literature l(2): 161-83.

Withey, Lynne E. 1976. Catharine Macaulay and the uses of history: Ancient rights, perfectionism, and propaganda. Journal of British Studies 16: 59-83.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. 1792. 1982. A vindication of the rights of woman. Reprint. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

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